Prior U.S. patent applications Ser. No. 10/119,784, titled “Method and Apparatus For Controlling Access to Portal Content From Outside the Portal,” filed Apr. 9, 2002, Ser. No. 10/066,465, titled “Method and Apparatus To Dynamically Provide Web Content Resources In a Portal,” filed Jan. 30, 2002, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/066,368, titled “Method to Dynamically Determine a User's Language for the Internet,” filed Jan. 30, 2002, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/823,731, titled “A Hierarchical Directory Based Method and Apparatus for Controlling Customized User Web Content Within an Internet Portal,” filed Mar. 29, 2001, describe various elements used in managing content for users in a portal. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10,119,784 teaches a method and apparatus for applying security to pages in a portal, even when the content is not viewed through the portal. And U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/066,465 teaches how users can view portal content in different languages without having to identify language-specific pages in the portal.
These patent applications do not address the question of portal page management. Although users can design a portal page just for themselves, it can happen that a user would prefer to view a portal page designed by another user. In a system where each user is responsible for maintaining his own portal page, the usual solution is for the user to copy the design of the other user's portal page. But if the other user changes his portal design, this change is not propagated to any users that copied the design for their own portal pages.
Another issue involving portal page management lies in linked pages. Where one page leads to another, a link is commonly offered between the pages. But it can happen that only certain users should have permission to view one of the pages. In that case, whether or not the link is provided, and whether or not the user can view the content on that page, is dependent not on the content of the pages, but on permissions associated with the user.
Related to linked pages are page overlays. A page overlay provides additional content to the user, beyond that included on the portal page. As with linked pages, certain users can have permission to view an overlay, while other users can be denied access to the overlay. Again, whether the user can view the content of the page overlay is dependent on the permissions associated with the user.
A need remains for a way to provide content within a portal that addresses these and other problems associated with the prior art.